Hostname: page-component-6898cfcb55-w5hgh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-11T03:24:07.991Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Semantics of Possessives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Stanley Peters and
Dag Westerståhl
Stanley Peters*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Dag Westerståhl*
Affiliation:
Stockholm University and University of Gothenburg
*
[peters@stanford.edu]
[peters@stanford.edu]
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

We investigate what possessives mean by examining a wide range of English examples, pre- and postnominal, quantified and nonquantified, to arrive at general, systematic truth conditions for them. In the process, we delineate a rich class of paradigmatic possessives having crosslinguistic interest, exploiting characteristic semantic properties. One is that all involve (implicit or explicit) quantification over possessed entities. Another is that this quantification always carries existential import, even when the quantifier over possessed entities itself does not. We show that this property, termed possessive existential import, is intimately related to the notion of narrowing (Barker 1995). Narrowing has implications for compositionally analyzing possessives’ meaning. We apply the proposed semantics to the issues of the definiteness of possessives, negation of possessives, partitives and prenominal possessives, postnominal possessives and complements of relational nouns, freedom of the possessive relation, and the semantic relationship between pre- and postnominal possessives.

Keywords

possessive (prenominal and postnominal)compositional semanticsexistential importnarrowingdefinitenesspartitivesrelational noun complements

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 89 , Issue 4 , December 2013, pp. 713 - 759
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

We thank Arto Anttila, Chris Barker, Greg Carlson, Lucas Champollion, Edit Doron, Vivienne Fong, Lauri Karttunen, Ed Keenan, Peter Lasersohn, Peter Pagin, Barbara Partee, Stephen Read, Ivan Sag, and Anna Szabolcsi for helpful comments and discussion, along with three anonymous referees whose detailed and insightful remarks improved the article substantially. Peters's work on this article was supported in part by the Stanford Presidential Pilot Program of Research Funding for the Humanities. Westerstahl's work was supported by a grant from the Swedish Research Council.

References

Abbott, Barbara. 2004. Definiteness and indefiniteness. The handbook of pragmatics, ed. by Horn, Laurence R. and Ward, Gregory, 122–49. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Abbott, Barbara. 2010. Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bach, Emmon, and Partee, Barbara H.. 1981. Quantification, pronouns and VP anaphora. Formal methods in the study of language, ed. by Groenendijk, Jeroen, Janssen, Theo, and Stokhof, Martin, 445–81. Amsterdam: Matematisch Centrum, University of Amsterdam. [Reprinted in Truth, information and interpretation: Selected papers from the Third Amsterdam Colloquium, ed. by Jeroen Groenendijk, Theo Janssen, and Martin Stokhof, 99-130. Dordrecht: Foris, 1984.].Google Scholar
Barker, Chris. 1995. Possessive descriptions. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Barker, Chris. 2005. Possessive weak definites. In Kim, et al., 89–113.Google Scholar
Barker, Chris. 2011. Possessives and relational nouns. Semantics: An international handbook of natural language meaning, vol. 2, ed. by Maienborn, Claudia, Heusinger, Klaus von, and Portner, Paul, 1109–30. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Barwise, Jon, and Cooper, Robin. 1981. Generalized quantifiers and natural language. Linguistics and Philosophy 4. 159–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beaver, David. 2001. Presupposition and assertion in dynamic semantics. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Beaver, David, and Geurts, Bart. 2011. Presupposition. The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (summer 2011 edition), ed. by Zalta, Edward N.. Online: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/presupposition/.Google Scholar
Birner, Betty, and Ward, Gregory. 1994. Uniqueness, familiarity, and the definite article in English. Berkeley Linguistics Society 20. 93–102.Google Scholar
Buridan, John. 2001 [c. 1300-1358]. Summulae de dialectica (annotated translation and introduction by Klima, Gyula). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, EveV. 1978. Locationals: Existential, locative, and possessive constructions. Universais of human language, ed. by Greenberg, Joseph J., 85–126. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Glanzberg, Michael. 2006. Quantifiers. The Oxford handbook of philosophy of language, ed. by Lepore, Ernest and Smith, Barry C., 794–821. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Halliday, Μ. A. K. 1994. An introduction to functional grammar. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 1999. Explaining article-possessor complementarity: Economic motivation in noun phrase syntax. Language 75. 2. 227–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hellan, Lars. 1980. Toward an integrated theory of noun phrases. Trondheim: Trondheim University dissertation.Google Scholar
Higginbotham, James, and May, Robert. 1981. Questions, quantifiers, and crossing. The Linguistic Review 1. 41–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney, and Pullum, Geoffrey K.. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9781316423530CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1977. Xsyntax: A study of phrase structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Janssen, Theo. 1997. Compositionality. In van Benthem & ter Meulen, 417–73.Google Scholar
Jensen, Per Anker, and Vikner, Carl. 1994. Lexical knowledge and the semantic analysis of Danish genitive constructions. Topics in knowledge-based NLP systems, ed. by Hansen, Steffen Leo and Wegener, Helle, 37–55. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur.Google Scholar
Kadmon, Nirit. 1987. On unique and non-unique reference and asymmetric quantification. Amherst: University of Massachusetts dissertation. [Published, New York: Garland, 1992.].Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward, and Stavi, Jonathan. 1986. A semantic characterization of natural language determiners. Linguistics and Philosophy 9. 253–326.10.1007/BF00630273CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keenan, Edward, and Westerståhl, Dag. 2011. Generalized quantifiers in linguistics and logic. Handbook of logic and language, 2nd edn., ed. by van Benthem, Johan and Meulen, Alice ter, 859–910. Amsterdam: Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Ji-yung, Lander, Yury A.; and Partee, Barbara H. (eds.) 2005. Possessives and beyond: Semantics and syntax. (University of Massachusetts occasional papers in linguistics 29.) Amherst: GLSA Publications.Google Scholar
Ladusaw, William A. 1982. Semantic constraints on the English partitive construction. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL) 1. 231–42.Google Scholar
Laidig, Wyn. 1993. Insights from Larike possessive constructions. Oceanic Linguistics 32. 311–51.10.2307/3623197CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luraghi, Silvia. 1990. The structure and development of possessive noun phrases in Hittite. Historical linguistics 1987: Papers from the 8th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Lille, August 30-September 4, 1987 (Current issues in linguistic theory 66), ed. by Andersen, Henning and Koerner, E. F. K., 309–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Lyons, Christopher. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGregor, William B. 2010. The expression of possession. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Munn, Alan. 1995. The possessor that stayed close to home. Western Conference on Linguistics (WECOL) 24. 181–95.Google Scholar
Newman, Stanley. 1979. A history of the Salish possessive and subject forms. International Journal of American Linguistics 45. 207–23.Google Scholar
Pagin, Peter, and Westerståhl, Dag. 2010. Compositionality I: Definitions and variants. Philosophy Compass 5. 3. 250–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Partee, Barbara H. 1997. Uniformity vs. Uniformity vs: The genitive, a case study. Appendix to Janssen 1997. In van Benthem & ter Meulen, 464–70.Google Scholar
Partee, Barbara h., and Borschev, Vladimir. 1998. Integrating lexical and formal semantics: Genitives, relational nouns, and type-shifting. Proceedings of the Second Tbilisi Symposium on Language, Logic and Computation, ed. by Cooper, Robin and Gamkrelidze, Thomas, 229–41. Tbilisi: Center of Language, Logic, Speech, Tbilisi State University.Google Scholar
Partee, Barbara h., and Borschev, Vladimir. 2003. Genitives, relational nouns, and argument-modifier ambiguity. Modifying adjuncts (Interface explorations 4), ed. by Lang, Ewald, Maienborn, Claudia, and Fabricius-Hansen, Cathrine, 67–112. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Peters, Stanley, and Westerståhl, Dag. 2006. Quantifiers in language and logic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Poutsma, Hendrik. 1914. A grammar of Late Modern English. Groningen: P. Noordhoff.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey; and Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Roberts, Craige. 2003. Descriptive genitives in English: A case study on constructional gradience. English Language and Linguistics 10. 1. 77–118.Google Scholar
Rosenbach, Anette. 2003. Uniqueness in definite noun phrases. Linguistics and Philosophy 26. 3. 287–350.Google Scholar
Sinor, Denis. 1995. The nature of possessive suffixes in Uralic and Altaic. Linguistic and literary studies in honor of Archibald A. Hill, vol. 3: Historical and comparative linguistics (Trends in linguistics: Studies and monographs 9), ed. by Jaza-yery, Mohammad Ali, Polomé, Edgar C., and Winter, Werner, 257–66. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Song, Jae Jung. 1997. The history of Micronesian possessive classifiers and benefactive marking in Oceanic languages. Oceanic Linguistics 36. 29–64.10.2307/3623070CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Storto, Gianluca. 2005. Possessives in context. In Kim, et al., 59–86.Google Scholar
Strauss, Uri. 2005. Individual-denoting and property-denoting possessives. In Kim, et al., 183–98.Google Scholar
Taylor, John R. 1996. Possessives in English: An exploration in cognitive grammar. Oxford: Clarendon.10.1093/oso/9780198235866.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Benthem, Johan, and Meulen, Alice ter (eds.) 1997. Handbook of logic and language. Amsterdam: Elsevier. [Revised and updated edition in 2011.].Google Scholar
Vikner, Carl, and Jensen, Per Anker. 2002. A semantic analysis of the English genitive: Interaction of lexical and formal semantics. Studia Linguistica 56. 191–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westerståhl, Dag. 2008. Decomposing generalized quantifiers. Review of Symbolic Logic 1. 3. 1–17.10.1017/S1755020308080234CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westerståhl, Dag. 2011. Traditional vs. modern squares of opposition, and beyond. The square of opposition, ed. by Beziau, Jean-Yves and Payette, Gillman, 195–229. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Woisetschlaeger, Erich. 1983. On the question of definiteness in ‘an old man's book’. Linguistic Inquiry 14. 137–54.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Peters and Westerståhl supplementary material

Addendum to ‘The semantics of possessives’: Barker on quantified possessives
Download Peters and Westerståhl supplementary material(File)
File 221.8 KB